Jim Yoes and I have been good friends for eighteen years. The philosophy expressed in this book is not central to our friendship, but it is central to Jim Yoes. I know that because he has been formulating it and testing it in his life for as long as I have known him, and no matter what else he has been engaged in, it is this honing of his perception of reality that has remained his deepest concern. Because I am aware of this, I can see that his book is surprisingly free of pretense. His speech and thought and writing are of one piece. Over the years I have heard him express almost every idea in this book as his own carefully arrived at and strongly felt conviction. I say all of this because the concepts and sentiments expressed here, if passed over too quickly, could be dismissed as something turned out to favor the current appetite for a vague, indemonstrable mysticism. Above all, Jim Yoes has striven to find for his ideas an application that is practical.

I believe that our life, our day, each moment, has within it a rhythm of progression that can be sensed, and if sensed, followed. When this happens, and for me it happens rarely, the future is in some way taken into consideration and one finds himself in the right place at the right time; he sees his opportunities and can act on them; he is able to provide reasonably for his needs; in short, he has good fortune which is another way of saying he has timing. More than any other I have seen, Jim Yoes’ life evidences a sensitivity to this rhythm. Because in his writing he places such strong emphasis on the importance of “listening to the universe,” I suspect that this pattern in his life is not so much an inherited trait as it is a result of endeavor. He may in fact have discovered a means whereby one can increase his sensitivity to the flow of events within which one must move. If there were no other reason than that, it would be a sufficient one for me to continue to give close consideration to what he has to say.